Hey guys, sorry I haven't updated in a really long while, but anyways, here's chapter 12.

The next few chapters are gonna be a little different from all the others.

They are going to be told in first person (because it's the character's dreams, well it's more like their past/memories) and each chapter is devoted to only one character. For example, this chapter is about Hige's dream so it will be told entirely by Hige.

Only Hige's part of the story/point of view will be told in this chapter.

And since this chapter was just way too long, I split it in half. So the next chapter will also be told in Hige's point of view, it'll just be part II.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about I hope you figure it soon or else you're probably going to be really lost. But then again if you're smart enough to watch Wolf's Rain, you're smart enough to figure all this out right?

Anyways, thanks to everyone who read and/or reviewed the last chapter.

Please read and review. (really, please review I love it when you guys leave comments)

Enjoy ;D

Encounter Twelve: A Wolf Without A Past - Part I

Hige

I can't remember anything from back then. I don't know why, maybe I just have a horrid memory like that.

It's weird though, I can only remember the stuff that happened after I arrived at Freeze City… Sometimes I feel like I just appeared in front of the massive dome that encircled the city out of nowhere. Like I had just started existing right then and there.

I stood there for a few moments utterly confused. All I knew was that my name was Hige, how to make myself appear as a human, and that I was attracted to the beautiful scent coming from the building in front of me.

After a while I journeyed inside. I found my way through the maze of halls, dodging humans in weird clothing, and ended up in a strange chamber. A large cage was in the center of the room.

In the cage was an unconscious wolf whose white fur was stained with blood.

I stared at him for a while. He opened his eyes as if he'd been awake the entire time.

I talked to him for a bit and helped him escape. It was kind of funny, we walked right past the people that had caught him and no one even noticed us. The perks of being able to appear as a human… Still I saw my new friend look back at one of the detectives, maybe he felt as if that guy had noticed him or something. I don't know, it doesn't matter anyway.

Later we talked some more and I found out his name was Kiba and that he was searching for Paradise. I thought it was kind of strange. I didn't think anyone still believed in that place, but I decided I would go with him anyway.

As we hung out the next day, Kiba got this crazy notion that the police would take him back to the building he had been kept in the day before if they arrested him as a human along with the other criminals they were rounding up. He wanted to get to the lab in order to get closer to Cheza, or the beacon that would lead us to Paradise as he called it.

Cheza, as I knew somehow, was the Flower Maiden and was created from Lunar Flowers. But I knew no one could get as far as the lab in there, unless they worked there, not even I could do it and that's saying something.

The more he talked about it, the more it freaked me out. He wouldn't listen to me, no matter what I said. He eventually just turned around and left. I couldn't help but follow him.

That night, after successfully being captured and locked up in one of the many cells in "The Building", we awoke with a start in the middle of the night. A strange feeling was in the air, like something was about to happen. Within seconds we were up and as Kiba knelt down to try and pry the bars to the cell apart, I tapped his shoulder and pulled a key out of my pocket. What would he do without me?

We sneaked out of the building through a vent and wound up on an abandoned street. I motioned for Kiba to follow me even though I didn't have the slightest clue where I was going. As we ran down the street we stopped suddenly at the sight of a tall human dressed in a long, dark cloak and a strange mask. All in all he was just plain odd. As I took in his appearance, I couldn't help but think the word "Noble", however I couldn't think anything else because I noticed he held a beautiful, yet unconscious, girl in his arms.

"Wolves…" He said, "You have my gratitude. For it was you who woke her."

"What?" I said.

"Who the hell are you?" Kiba yelled.

"The Flower Maiden," He said calmly, unfazed by Kiba, "Is mine."

"The Maiden? Is that Cheza?" I asked uncertainly.

Suddenly everything went bright with white light. I could hardly see. The man held the girl up by her neck. Tears streamed down her face and she screamed. It was a quiet yet high-pitched scream that was barely audible, but it drove me insane and I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to help her, to rescue the poor Flower Maiden from whoever this person was.

"We'll meet in Paradise," The man said as the white light began to engulf him, "If we meet again that is."

Kiba ran towards the man, but suddenly the white light disappeared and the man was gone. As if he was never there in the first place.

The scent of Lunar Flowers disappeared after that. Kiba and I went to find food and we talked about the strange human that had taken the Flower Maiden.

Something about the man was somewhat off-putting to Kiba. The man knew about Paradise and knew that we were wolves the second he looked at us. I tried to brush it off, even though I knew something wasn't right, but Kiba wouldn't drop it. I told him he would be crazy to go after a Noble and we should just head out and go find Paradise instead. However, even though the conversation ended, I don't think Kiba was totally over the whole Noble ordeal.

We left the city the next night. We picked up two other wolves before we left. Toboe, a little runt, and Tsume, a wanted gang leader. I guessed they were all right. The more the merrier.

After traveling for what seemed like forever, we stopped in a desolate rocky and snowy wasteland. The four of us waited in a cave for the storm to pass, but it looked like it would never end.

All Toboe and I talked about was food, none of us had eaten anything in three whole days, but Tsume and Kiba seemed like they were fine. Tsume told us to quit out wining and Kiba said if we basked under the moonlight we would last a lot longer without food, he even said that he once lasted a whole month when he did that. Of course, I wasn't in the mood to hear horror stories.

Tsume then said if worst came to worst we could just eat each other, and I quote "We'll start with the runt since he's gotten so weak and of course there's always little porky over there." Figures, my nickname was porky.

As Tsume and Kiba began argue, when Toboe asked Tsume why Kiba wasn't on the menu ("Because he's totally full of crap that's why."), I caught a whiff of something.

I ran out into the snow, the storm had finally cleared. The others followed me. Soon I found where the scent was coming from. A carcass of some kind of deer or antelope lay dead in the middle of nowhere.

We didn't know where it came from; I mean it was all by itself. Tsume asked me if I was going to eat it and I excitedly said, "Yeah, aren't you gonna?" and dove right in to the delectable meal. I honestly didn't care where it came from, I was just glad it was there.

Kiba, Toboe, and I chowed down while Tsume just stood back and refused to eat. I don't why he was so against eating a dead animal.

When Toboe offered Tsume food and told him that we still had a long way to go, Tsume started saying that Paradise didn't exist, which lead to a whole argument on the topic, which ended up in Tsume walking off.

I don't know what the guys problem was, but I was beginning to think the only one acting like a kid around there was him. Toboe went off to follow him; he said something about Tsume being really nice and how he really liked him, but I didn't think that statement was entirely correct. But I saw Kiba's expression when Toboe said that; maybe Kiba realized how much Toboe really cared for Tsume or something like that. I don't know… it's impossible to tell what Kiba's thinking.

The two of them were gone for a long time. It got dark really quick and the full moon came out. Kiba and I lay together on a strangely smooth rock surface and basked in the moonlight. We didn't say much.

"Ya know, I was thinking…" I began after a while, "We should go ahead a ditch that guy. I mean it's not like he has to tag along with us anyway. It was happenstance that threw us together and they just ended up with us that's all."

"The same goes for you," Kiba said simply.

"I don't know… That Tsume guy's been giving me a real dangerous vibe from the start."

"He's just different from us that's all. He's always had someone else to blame. That's pretty darn lucky if you ask me. Give him a break, he'll come around."

I sat up, "Okay, so what the hell is up with you anyway? I mean you're always talking like you've got an answer to just about everything. What happened to you before all this?"

"Not much..." That was the only answer Kiba gave me about the matter.

After a while, when Tsume and Toboe hadn't returned we sensed something in the distance but didn't pay much attention to it because we had caught the whiff of a wonderful scent in the opposite direction.

Just as Kiba was about to follow the scent he saw something on the ground. It was a red sign that said something that I couldn't read. I said there probably use to be a military base around here somewhere to brush it off, but Kiba just turned around and went towards the thing we sensed earlier. I tried not to question it, so I just followed him.

We saved a frightened Toboe and an injured Tsume from a giant military robot. Well, Kiba saved them, I just stood back and watched. But it was pretty awesome. I just couldn't comprehend why Kiba would put himself in harms way for someone else. Especially for someone he didn't get along with all the time.

Kiba somehow destroyed the robot and the next morning we set off again, ready to face whatever the world threw at us.

We traveled for what seemed like a lifetime. Through storms of snow and sand, during day and night. It never seemed to end. We were hungry and tired by the time we reached the new city.

A city that had no food, lots of people, tons of wolves, and was surrounded by the ocean. A city that reeked of oil, and smelled faintly of Lunar Flowers.

We ran into a bunch of wolves, I didn't like them, except for the one girl that was with them, she didn't say anything, but the other wolves told us that they'd been to Paradise and thought it was more like Hell. I didn't want to believe them. Kiba, Toboe, Tsume, and I kept moving.

Even though Toboe, Tsume, and I all thought we should just ditch the city and go somewhere else, Kiba thought otherwise. He told us that there had to be something in the city, why would there be so many wolves there if there wasn't anything to find? So we stuck around.

We wound up in a graveyard with an old wolf. We started talking about Lunar Flowers and the old wolf said Lunar Flowers once covered the whole island, but one day they were all dug up and now there wasn't a single petal left. He showed us to the entrance to a strange and mysterious tunnel that reeked of death.

The old wolf told us that all the young wolves that took that path never found Paradise and the few that returned stayed on the island and made a living for themselves, just like the rest of them. One of the wolves we had run into earlier took the old wolf away and told us to get out of the city before dawn. It was obvious he didn't want us messing up the peace of his pack or his city. He just wanted us gone. And gone for good.

That night, as we were talking, the pretty girl from the pack of wolves we had run into earlier came by with a bag of food. I was starving and immediately dug in. Kiba stalked off by himself and Tsume refused to eat anything and went off alone as well. Toboe followed Tsume; I didn't know why the kid wanted the pack to stay together so badly. I didn't pay much attention to what was happening around me anyway, there was too much good food to pass up and the pretty girl, whose name was Cole, was actually talking to me. I began to think that the city had way more going for it than I had previously thought.

I went to the Station the next morning. Cole had told me to. She said there would be more food there and that I would see something very fascinating. I didn't know what she meant by that at the time, but I didn't really care.

I found Tsume and Toboe asleep at the Station when I got there. Kiba never came back the night before. I wasn't worried though. We looked over the banister to the busy work being done down below us. It was shocking what we saw.

Wolves, tons of them, pulling weight meant for no creature to bare. It was horrifying. The men whipped the tired, worn-out wolves. The old wolf we'd run into the night before at the graveyard was one of the "workers", if you could call them that. The old wolf passed out suddenly, he had stopped moving. And stopped breathing too.

Work paused for a moment to remove the dead wolf from the area, but immediately resumed as soon as the body was disposed of. The wolf that had warned us to be out of the city by dawn appeared next to us and told us that this was the only way anybody could make a living down here.

By working for the humans the wolves got fed.

I thought it was strangely similar to what Tsume use to do back in Freeze City, but he snapped at me saying that he may have used the humans, but they never used him. But it didn't matter anyways; our opinion didn't change a damn thing.

Kiba appeared out of nowhere and, of course not thinking first, acted on impulse and tried to attack the men who were whipping the wolves, but the wolf we were talking to jumped down and tackled him before he could. That was the end of it.

Later, while Kiba rested, Tsume made me go out and look for food. I didn't know how I was going to do it, the only way to get food on the island was to be one of those "worker dogs" and that sure as hell wasn't about to happen.

I caught a whiff of fresh meat for a second. Then I saw it… a moderately sized slab of meat just lyin' around. I picked it up and suddenly I was caught in a trap. Man, did I feel stupid getting caught by such a simple trick.

A few wolves walked up to the cage. The ones we had run into a few nights before. We talked for a bit, I told them I was sorry for any hard feelings we had caused for coming into town, but they wouldn't let me out. As a truck came closer to come and haul me away, cage and all, I began to get aggravated at them. Why wouldn't they just let me out? The conversation heated up, until one of them grabbed me by my collar and punched me in the gut. Then everything went black.

I awoke to find myself still in the cage on the back of a growling pick-up truck. I stood up and tried to catch the attention of the driver who was talking to the person in the passenger seat about throwing me in the incinerator and call it a day, but he didn't even notice me. Suddenly, the truck veered off the road and the cage tipped of the side of the truck and feel to the ground.

I looked up to see Kiba, Toboe, and Tsume looking down at me. Kiba pried open the bars of the cage since I refused to do such a barbaric thing. As I slipped out of the cage, the driver began to shoot at us, but another wolf jumped out of nowhere and disarmed him. The four of us began to run and soon the other wolf joined us as well.

That other wolf just happened to be the one that tackled Kiba back at the station. He led us to the tunnel in the graveyard and we followed him inside.

None of us were sure that the tunnel was 100% safe, but I guessed it was better than being burned up with the trash.

The wolf stopped as soon as we entered an even bigger tunnel that went on for what seemed like forever. He said that was as far as he planned to go. Kiba asked him why he wasn't going to come with us and he simply said, "I don't know if the place we tried to find was real or not, but I believe that there are some that can make it to Paradise and some who can't. I'm convinced in that… And it's time you find out for yourselves if the real Paradise does exist… Somewhere at the end of this road."

A few moments went by and I was over come with the urge to ask one final question.

"Hey, what's your name anyway?" I asked.

"Me? My name is Zali," The wolf replied never taking his eyes off the road that lay before us.

And with that Toboe, Tsume, Kiba, and I all began to run.

...

I can't believe it's already been a year since i started this! Thank you guys soo much for all your support for my fanfiction. Happy one year anniversary everybody! Please review!